


Reaching Out, Sunlit

by wearwind



Series: Verdant Wind [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Claude von Riegan is a Little Shit, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Marriage Proposal, Pretty visuals, Time is a River
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24555196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearwind/pseuds/wearwind
Summary: Sixteen, seventeen?she wonders as she studies his face: the skin too sun-drenched to mark him Fódlani, the Riegan eyes as green as the waterlogged carrs of Derdriu.Older still?Enough bitterness in these eyes to last a lifetime already, yet still naïveté enough to throw himself whole against the rejection, risk it all to gain it all. A gambling man; an archer with an arrow trained on the sun.Golden Deer are travelling, and Claude has got a question for Byleth. An important one.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Verdant Wind [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734619
Comments: 30
Kudos: 155





	Reaching Out, Sunlit

**Author's Note:**

> Continuity-wise, here we are toward the end of the Academy phase. Still young, chill, travelling.
> 
> (also remember: time is a river)

> Every day you play with the light of the universe.  
> Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.  
> You are more than this white head that I hold tightly  
> as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.  
>   
> You are like nobody since I love you.  
> Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.  
> Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?  
> Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
> 
> ...
> 
> How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,  
> my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.  
> So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,  
> and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.  
>   
> My words rained over you, stroking you.  
> A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.  
> I go so far as to think that you own the universe.  
> I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,  
> dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.  
> I want  
> to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

_Pablo Neruda, Every Day You Play_

The night is difficult - beasts roam the Goneril territory, and there is little rest for them to be found between twilight and dawn, defending the camp from one monstrous assailant after another. By the time pale sunlight paints her students’ faces in grey and orange hues, there is little colour for it to plaster over. The ground around their hastily set camp is soaked with blood and ichor.

But as the sun rises over the camp, the victory is theirs. Hilda and Sylvain swing their axes to chop up the monster corpses until they can drag the mangled flesh away from their tents and burn it; Claude commands the rest of them, his cheerful lilt seemingly untouched by a sleepless night, guiding them through the mundane things like boiling water and gathering firewood and cleaning the weapons already half-rusted by the demonic poison. Byleth makes the last rounds by herself, leaving them to their rest; but the eastern forest is quiet, trampled shrubbery rising from the ground already. 

When she returns, her students are resting on the ground, cleaning their faces and blood-soaked armour. Raphael pours a bucket of water straight onto his head and shakes off, dog-like; the pink splashes of diluted blood land on Lorenz. The budding argument is cut short by Leonie, who triumphantly arrives from the clearing with a basketful of sweet berries and begins handing them like a benevolent forest goddess. Byleth hands her share to Lysithea. Without looking, she knows Claude already dropped his own into the mage’s bowl.

Ignatz’s nose is still sooty as he lies on the ground, staring at the sky with half-lidded eyes. Hilda nudges him with her foot, taunting him about his face, but he does not respond; and Byleth wonders whether it’s tiredness or revulsion at the violence they have wrought. Or maybe he is deep in thought, pondering things of art and beauty. She would not know; they are faraway concepts, too large to hold in a mind of a mercenary. 

It’s not very long until Lysithea stands over Ignatz with a handkerchief, clearly revelling in the gesture as she leans down and unceremoniously wipes the soot off his nose. Ignatz springs up, mortified. There’s laughter; to Byleth’s surprise, Marianne’s.

The night has been exhausting, but now they’re still awake, and passing around bread with dried fruit, giddy with victory and sleeplessness and youth. The conversation leaps forward in hare-jumps, too quick for her to follow. They laugh and bicker and squabble over insignificant things, and their glittering eyes are over hers every once in a moment: _right_ , _Professor? - hey, Professor, how about when I -- and then I knocked it clean out, did you see that, Professor? -- Professor, maybe I should switch to axes -- psh, tell her, Professor --_

She smiles and offers her thoughts where they fit between the galloping stream of their eloquence. Claude’s shoulder knocks against hers. He has spoken much at the start of their breakfast, teasing and goading and fanning the flames of their conversation until it crackled like the fire under the boiling pot of water; but now, wreathed in the warmth of its already-steady embers, he has gone quiet, thoughtful. His eyes are on her, sharp and calculating as usual. He’s most likely counted the amount of words she has said since sunrise and is ready to tease her for it, but, for some rare reason - doesn’t.

She considers asking what is on _his_ mind, then decides against it.

When the meal is done, Byleth announces a three-hour break before they would move on. Hilda immediately retreats to her tent before any request comes her way; Lysithea tugs at Leonie’s shoulder, asking in a brisk voice where the berries would be found - for strictly herbalogic purposes. The rest of them fall where they stand, conversation slowing down to a giddy, syrupy trickle as they bicker on, tired and satiated and half-asleep.

Claude disappears quickly. Byleth doesn’t miss the way he slinks out of sight, making sure not too draw any attention of his distracted housemates. She glances away, allowing him to pass unnoticed; and then Lorenz takes her by the elbow, leads her to another, smaller fire over which a boiling kettle whistles happily. 

“You look like you could benefit from a demonstration of famous Gloucester tea-brewing skills,” he says, lofty. “No morning is truly complete--”

The tea is strong, rousing. Ignatz and Raphael talk about monster meat; pigments can be made from the blood, Ignatz explains, and Raphael whoops in glad surprise. Marianne smiles again. _Isn’t it wondrous,_ Byleth can see as clear as day in her sky-bright eyes, _that even in monster blood there is potential for art and beauty?_

She falls into herself, thoughtful, lips resting against the simple travelling teacup. 

  
  


***

She leaves them when they’re not looking. Spurning the well-worn path, she looks for deer traces instead and soon finds a barely visible, winding trail through the tight tangle of shrubbery. She follows it down the steep cliff, listening for the sounds of water at the bottom of the ravine.

The stream that skates across the length of the gully is a joyful silver ribbon, shallow and noisy against the slick rocks which line its uneven banks. Fallen across it like a lopsided footbridge, a once-mighty oak stretches its mouldering branches from end to end. Atop of it, one leg tucked comfortably under, the other dangling freely just over the glittering surface of the stream, sits Claude.

He’s half-shrouded in the shade of the forest above him, but the piercing morning light splinters in the stream and traces irregular flickers of blinding white across his arms and torso. Eyes shielded with an open palm, he is looking downstream with a thoughtful expression, his mouth moving slightly in shapes Byleth cannot quite make out. 

Muttering to himself, perhaps. That would be greatly in character, though she might yet lack any hard proof that he is prone to that vice. Or – something else.

She hesitates for a moment, loathe to break his moment of solitude. Something in the way he holds himself reminds her of the minute moments she steals away from her students, stepping away from their noisy merriment to fall back into herself. Try as they might to bring her closer into their endlessly complicated Academy lives, and try as she might to fit inside them, there is a wall of silence that all their chatter and squabbling eventually crashes against. Right where, in a regular friendship, it would be her turn to share of herself.

She _is_ a friend, genuinely and without reservation; but she is a friend with a secret.

For a long moment she turns the comparison in her head, both amused and vaguely touched at the thought. Then she carefully makes her way down the cliff. 

(These are the edges of _loneliness_ on him, lined so crisply in the flickering reflexes from the stream; and they look like they would fit comfortably around her own.

She doesn’t acknowledge the stab of longing that goes through her at the sight.)

He doesn’t hear her approach through the joyful murmur of the stream. But as he begins to enunciate again, her words reach her loud and clear.

“—the light of my spear,” Claude says with fond melancholy. “The sharpness in the iron of my axe. Your edges tear away the flakes of blood-rust. Remade, the blade is fit for a new purpose.” His hand moves aimlessly, tossing a piece of bark into the glimmering surface below him. ”I shall plunge iron into the sky and cut down stars from their thrones, and make heavens anew.”

His voice is calm, carrying with it an iron-clad certainty, and Byleth shivers without quite knowing why. It’s a youth’s dream; hardly unusual in its hubris. And yet, and yet--

She takes another step forward, purposefully crushing a dry twig under her boot. Claude startles; his head swivels to look at her in surprise that is almost perfectly natural. 

She would be fooled, had she not seen him truly surprised in battle. As it stands, though, the line of his back is too relaxed, eyes too round. She feels something warm in her chest at the thought that he has anticipated her, has _chosen_ to share the poem with her.

“Teach! Didn’t see you there. Sneaking around to hunt my secrets, eh? How the tables have turned.”

She gives him a small smile. “It was nice.”

“The poem? Way to embarrass a man,” Claude says with a smirk. Then he lazily shuffles from his spot on the log and pats the wood at his side.

Byleth chuckles under her breath. _So much for intruding._

Feet steady on the slippery, shadowed bark, she climbs the oak to drop cross-legged at the spot he’s offered. From that vantage point, the stream looks like a glittering thread of silver cutting into the tall, shadowy sides of the ravine. The reflexes it throws back at her are blinding, and she closes her eyes against it.

She can feel his warm presence next to her. 

“So,” says Claude. “Sick of your charges already? And it hasn’t even been a half hour.” 

“They deserve some time off without their teacher hovering around them,” Byleth says dryly. Claude makes a low, contemplative sound in the back of his throat that is just a little bit amused.

“Not that they’d mind,” he says.

She concedes the point, propping her elbow on the knee and resting her chin on the knuckles. “Even so,” she says, “it’s not good to feel the eyes of an authority always on you as you rest.” She tilts her head towards him, regarding him with one one of her more impish glances as she says, “That’s why you’re here too.”

Claude laughs. The narrow cliffs lining the stream carry it much further than his own voice would, and for the moment the entire ravine rings with his laughter. “Me, huh? No chance. I’m just here to scheme in the shadows, as always. Though, Teach, I am very flattered you think of me as the responsible leader of the Alliance.”

Byleth turns back to the river. “Yes. Would you have me think something else?”

Claude doesn’t rise to the bait, silence falling between them. His leg is dangling aimlessly to almost skirt the bubbling surface of the stream. When she glances at him from under her drooped eyelashes, his face is thoughtful.

“You know,” he says after a long moment, “there’s this memory I’ve been holding onto for a while now. I wonder if you even remember. It was about two weeks after you'd been brought to the monastery, and we were still getting used to you being--” he makes a vague all-encompassing gesture at her direction, and Byleth smiles under her breath, “well-- you. Don’t laugh at me, Teach. It’s not like you’re making yourself particularly easy to describe.”

That curls her lips even more. Claude huffs to himself, feigning offence, but his eyes crinkle with poorly hidden fondness. “Look at you, having a chuckle at your poor student’s expense. Where was I? Ah-- the memory. I had no idea what to make of you. I’d already drained my old man’s allowance dry bribing your old mercenary pals for any kind of information, and I still knew nothing at all. I’m pretty sure one day I started a bidding war with Hubert’s spies for that one nugget of intel that seemed promising. It turned out the guy just saw you mutter to yourself sometimes. So it just seemed hopeless. It was becoming clear to me I would never know who you really are if I just _looked_ for it.”

Byleth twists her shoulders to level a half-hearted glare at his head. “You paid my father’s men to get intelligence on me?”

“Hey, that was before we bonded! Wouldn’t you do the same in my place, Teach?”

She knows she would, and by the smug look he’s wearing, he also knows that well. Byleth turns back to look down at the river, sighing at the resourcefulness of him. It’s an admission in itself, that memory - a light-hearted, softly-trod reveal of how long and how closely he’s been watching her.

She knows _that_ too. 

“So,” Claude continues, his grin fading as he gazes ahead, “I knew the only thing I could rely on was my own observation. So I decided to test you. See for myself if you were really that tactical genius everyone said you would be.”

There is a beat of silence. A bird of prey crosses the sky above the ravine, a flash of shadow skimming across their faces.

“When we next fought the bandits, I suggested you, by yourself, engage the vanguard to draw them out into our range. Lysithea started yelling at me immediately. You know, she was right. There was way too many of them, and packed way too densely to make it work.” He smiles to himself, but it’s shallow, insincere. “I still persuaded her and everybody else to go with it. And you… do you remember what you did?”

Byleth shakes her head. Claude nods to himself, as if he expected it. “You nodded. Just -- nodded. Didn’t even try to argue.”

He goes silent for a long moment, his lively eyes momentarily glossed over by memory. “I felt guilty, Teach. So I was right about you, but who’d even care anymore? I’d just goaded you into something that’d get you killed, just to prove a point that you weren’t as smart as everybody was talking you up to be. I remember thinking, _I just led a professor straight to her death_.” He draws a short, shallow breath. “But I couldn’t exactly dissuade you, after I’ve spent the better part of the week dishing out arguments for it. So when the day came, I told the others to stay put and wait for the signal. Then I went after you to stop you.”

Byleth takes a long look at him. The smile he’s wearing is a thin, raggedy disguise, a token more than anything meant to truly hide, but the presence of it is jarring all the same. “Claude,” she says softly.

“I know, I know. Get to the point already, Chatterbox von Riegan. I’m almost there, promise.” He pulls the other leg from under his thigh and stretches lazily, corded muscle of his bare arms flickering in reflected sunlight. “So there I am, creeping through the forest, hiding in the thickets, praying to all sorts of gods to not make _myself_ visible to the vanguard either. You know, since we’ve established doing that alone would be a suicide.” He steals a glance at her from under his half-lidded eyes. “And then I see you. Surrounded by enemies, and so tiny. You are very small for a mercenary, Teach, has anyone ever told you that? Goddess, how has Jeralt ever let you enlist in his company in the first place? It seems like such a terrible decision for a father.”

“Your father taught you to fight,” Byleth replies. She’s facilitating his stalling, she knows, but the urge to defend Jeralt’s memory is stronger. _He did what he had to. This world makes weapons of us all._

 _“_ Yes, and then I went to a _school_ where very talented people did their best to make sure I’d stay alive while doing it. Maybe you’ve even heard of it, _Teach_ \-- _”_

“Claude,” Byleth says, voice flat, and he goes silent.

When he picks up, the residual smile that had hung onto his face is gone. “There were so many of them. Many more than when we first met. I remember having two voices in my head, then. One was saying, _go help her, you coward. It’s your fault._ The other-- the other one normally keeps me alive. It was pointing out that it was still too many for two. It wouldn’t have accomplished much, and we would’ve both died. So there I was, hiding in the bushes when you were fighting, and I hated myself more with every passing second.” He trails off. “And then… I kept looking.”

Vaguely, the memory comes back to her. Their first assignment after the mock battle. A risky plan, a thick enemy vanguard. Still, she preferred it that way; she had barely started to show those children proper melee stances, and Ignatz had set fire to his own hair on his first day of magic training. They had no purpose on the frontlines.

“And you kept going through them,” Claude says, old awe in his voice. “One after the other. It still gives me pause sometimes, Teach, you know? Seeing you in battle is just... something else. But that was the first time, and I was so rooted in place I might as well have been just another thicket. And then I had this third thing in my head. I think it could have been that elusive voice of reason. It just said, _Claude, whatever you do - do not underestimate that woman again._ ” 

He turns to her, the pretence of casualness momentarily stripped away. ”Teach… do you remember what we prayed for, that night forever ago?”

“No,” Byleth says very softly, and his face falls before she adds, “You never said what your true ambition was.”

“Ah.” He chuckles to himself. “That’s right. I didn’t. What did you think of my poem?”

It takes her by surprise. The pleasure from catching her off guard glistens in his eyes for a second, before it is replaced by something more keenly focussed. “I said it was nice.”

“Yes,” he presses gently, “but what did you think it was _about_?”

Byleth considers it for a moment. Claude is leaning toward her now, forest-green eyes glimmering with familiar hunger. Without meaning to, she has wandered into one of his schemes, and played long enough to have reached the endgame; but what his goals are, she can only guess.

“I think,” she says, “that you wish to change the world.”

“Hey, hey,” he chastises, cocking an eyebrow, “ _the speaking voice_ wishes to change the world.” She casts him an unimpressed glare, and he draws back a little, still thoroughly unrepentant. “But yes -- yes. Tell me more.”

She’s half a mind to ignore him, to cut through whatever gobelin of obscurity he’s weaving with one pointed question - but there is vulnerability in his expression he so rarely lets show. And -- that would require her telling him no, which is one of her biggest failures as a teacher. 

“ _The speaking voice,_ ” she says with a hint of acidity, “is a warrior sharpening his weapons. For a purpose that is nothing short of blasphemy.”

“Please, Teach,” Claude says. “This far east, and this deep in the forest, you don’t need to pretend that this word actually means anything to you.”

“And yet,” she says, low with warning, “it binds the minds of so many, even here. Be careful about writing your poems down, Claude.”

“I don’t,” he says. “Believe me, I know a thing or two about bound minds.” Something sharp glimmers in his eyes like a sliver of ice as he adds, “And bound beliefs.”

“Is that why you wish to unmake the heavens?”

He draws in a long breath, staring straight ahead. Then he pulls his legs back onto the log, crossing them in a perfect mirror of her own position, and leans on his elbows towards her. 

“No. Not unmake. It’s important that those that look up for hope and guidance find them there. I’m not quite fool enough to stuff a radical philosophy into that swampy brain of mine, you know. _Remake._ An ideal that allows a different, more just Fódlan.” 

He sighs, and for the first time she can see a shadow of real exhaustion bearing heavy under his still-youthful eyes. _How old might he be? Sixteen? Seventeen?_ “Call me a fool, but there are -- things. Plans. Hopes I’ve been clinging to very, very tight for years on end, and honestly, my arms are starting to numb.”

He reaches out. His fingers are a shock of warmth as they touch her wrist - gently, hesitantly, daring her to pull back or brush him away. She does neither, watching him with a blank expression; it almost makes him falter before he collects himself again. “I… ah. Ever since I came to the monastery, I’ve been looking for a way to ease that grip on them. Someone to share them with.”

“Share them,” she repeats. He quakes softly at the way she says it, but his hand is steady on hers. “Share what, Claude?”

His fingers encircle her wrist in a warm cuff. Hesitant, but untrembling. “You’re under no obligation to stay in the monastery now, are you? I know you did that for your father in the first place. And whatever really happened when you stepped through the sky, you don’t owe anything to the Church or the goddess either.” 

He gives her the slightest pull; it feels like a lightning set to her spine. “Come to Derdriu with me, Teach. I have a feeling you’ll be wasted playing Rhea’s favourite girl for years to come. You’ve allied with Leicester already, why not go a step further and swear yourself to the Sovereign Duke?”

Byleth blinks very slowly. He is sincere; she can see that in the vulnerable lines of his face, the earnest upturn of his brow, hope and eagerness laid bare for her to peruse. No hiding here, not now. Whatever game he has invited her into, whatever the final result may be, _he_ is all in.

He wishes to make heavens anew; and he’d seen her tear open the sky.

She wants to say a million things, but the mass of them pushes through her throat at the same time. What she says is, “You wish to recruit me?”

Claude pales. Then he grinds a foreign word in his teeth, something foul and entirely too impassioned to be anything else than a curse. Byleth can feel her eyebrows rise. “I-- _ugh._ Yes. Of course. Make it difficult for me, Teach. It’s not like you’ve ever been anything less than a challenge.” 

He draws another deep breath, leaning forward, the fingers around her wrist slipping down to cover her palm, and suddenly she _understands._ “I wanted to--”

“Claude,” she says, reaching out to cradle his hand in between hers.

He stills, as if spellbound, emerald eyes growing dark and wide. “Yes?”

“I know you’re scared,” Byleth says, her throat growing thicker with every word. “I know you’re alone. But this is not the way.”

For a moment of perfect stillness, the only thing that moves is the tight-strung line of his throat. He swallows with difficulty, and her heart feels like another piece of bark tossed into the stream: torn, falling, plunging into gushing depths.

Then he withdraws, dropping his legs again to skirt the surface of the water. One shake of his head makes his hair fall over the downcast eyes, obscuring whatever emotion is welling inside. Against herself she tightens her hold on his hand, but he doesn’t try to wrench it away; it’s a dead thing between her palms. 

“It was worth a try,” he says with a soft, self-mocking lilt. “Sorry, Teach. You know me. I’m never above some grovelling to get me the prize.”

 _The prize,_ she mouths. It feels like poison on her tongue. “Is it a bride you’re after, or is it the Crest of Flames in your bloodline?”

A crimson blush creeps up his neck. “Is this really how little you think of me?”

Byleth lets go of his hand, drawing herself up in a straight posture. Faintly, she is aware of the ache in her dead chest. “You are a good liar, Claude, but not good enough.”

“Figures I still have some work to do,” he replies almost easily, but the little breath he catches after is that of a man punched to the chest. “Seems like I can never hide from you, eh, Teach? Here’s your truth, then. I thought I was fortunate enough not to have to choose.”

The truth - not just the truth, but _her truth._ And it’s in the echo of warmth on her fingers, the lingering phantom touch that turns into more ache every passing second. “You do not mean that,” she says. 

Whatever he catches shifting in her face is enough to light a fire in his eyes. “And why not?” he asks, defiant. “Hate to break it to you, Teach, but for all your expertise, _I_ ’m the world’s greatest expert in what I mean _._ And I’m pretty sure I mean what I said.” 

He shifts on the log, and Byleth notices his fingers are wound around a wet edge of old bark; he is pulling at it with with fruitless force, his movements almost aimless, but she can see the tendons straining against his skin. “What you decide to do with it now is up to you. You’re very welcome to pretend I’ve never said it at all. But I did, and I meant it, and I don’t regret it.”

Byleth gives him a long, silent look. Then, fingers resolute, she reaches out for him -- does not miss the way he restrains a shudder -- and pulls sharply at the swathe of bark. It comes off the glistening wood with a wet slap.

Claude swallows hard. Their faces are close, close enough for her to see the edge of despair buried in the depths of his eyes. “And what did _that_ mean, Teach?”

Wordlessly, she passes him the rotten strip. He takes her hand instead and does not let go.

“You’re right,” he says, voice straining and raw. “I am scared. I am alone. But I know what I’m trying to do is right, and I need allies and power to see it through. You know me by now, Teach. Maybe not the whole of it, but you _do,_ and you never said no to me once. Not even when I gambled with your life.” 

His lips split in a heartbreaking smile; up close she can see how dry they are, how chapped. “Do you want me to beg for you hand? Because I will. I would already be on my knees, if I had any smidgeon of hope that’d change your mind.”

“Claude,” she says, very softly. “You’re going about this all wrong.”

“Yes?” he asks. Something quivers in him, as if he were the surface of the river himself, and her a careless stone-caster. “Of course. You gonna show me the right way, then, Teach?”

 _Sixteen, seventeen?_ she wonders as she studies his face: the skin too sun-drenched to mark him Fódlani, the Riegan eyes as green as the waterlogged carrs of Derdriu. _Older still?_ Enough bitterness in these eyes to last a lifetime already, yet still naivete enough to throw himself whole against the rejection, risk it all to gain it all. A gambling man; an archer with an arrow trained on the sun. 

She remembers -- she remembers his eyes growing darker, shoulders broader, the bow in his arm thickening with bony ridges, cracking with ancient blood-power. He is golden, golden and verdant, his hair of Riegan chestnut bound back with a weaved cloth. He descends upon Derdriu like a fallen star, the ground beneath his white beast set ablaze, and she knows him for what he is --- the man, the king, the joining of two rivers of blood, from which a new world will spring triumphant --

Not yet.

“I will always be at your side,” she says, and without understanding why she knows it to be true.

Claude stills. “Then,” he says, voice forcibly calm, “why won’t you--”

“You wish to remake the world,” Byleth says. “So why are you choosing to bind yourself by the old world’s rules? There is hardly an older trick to power than marrying into a powerful Crest.”

He stills, death-pale. Then his lip quirks almost against himself. “Thanks for pointing that out, Teach. I’ll make sure to do away with it at once, _when I win._ ”

“And how will you do that?” she asks, steel in her voice. “If you hold your victory thanks to a Crest and Crest alone, will you let go of it? Or will you hoard power across generations like every other noble of Fódlan? You know the pain it has caused for all that bear those bloodlines, and you know the rights and wrongs of arranged marriages. Yet you would still propose one?”

Claude’s brows furrow. “Setting aside the issue of an _arranged_ marriage - how else do you propose I play politics?” he asks, half frustrated, half incredulous. “Are _you_ the more idealistic one out of the two of us, Teach? I’ll never gain any foothold at power if I don’t at least step into the game.”

“Play the game,” Byleth says, and closes his fingers around the piece of bark. “Meet them where they are, and know the rules they play by, but don’t bind yourself to them. You wish for change, Claude. So change yourself first.”

He swallows, eyes trained on her. She can see the way thoughts gallop behind them, a frantic chase to a solution. “So you would not marry for a political objective, then.”

“No,” Byleth says. “And I would be loathe to see you do so. In that new world of yours, I hope that no-one will have to marry for anything but love.”

He nods, very slowly, and turns towards the river. The bark bends under his fingers as he curls his hand around it, fingertip dragging against the rot. “And if I were to say,” he says softly, “that there will be no need for politics in a marriage, in that future world of mine?”

“Is it the world you want for all?” she asks, dropping her legs to fall against his. They dangle just above the glittering surface of the stream, four leather boots barely skirting the water. She feels the warm press of his thigh against her, muscle shifting as he kicks the air aimlessly and nods a silent ascent.

“Then you must want it for yourself,” she says.

Claude is quiet for a long moment, deep in thought, long enough that she almost expects him not to speak again.

Then he laughs. The ravine carries it forth, beyond the shadows into the golden sunlight.

“Sorry, Teach -- I just realised something,” he says, turning his head back to look at her, and his eyes are sparkling, bright, _relieved._ The reflected sun dances across his chest. “It took my head a while to catch up with my ears. You said, and correct me if I misheard - that you will always be at my side?”

Byleth hums in her throat, nodding her head just a litte. Claude grins, wide enough for his teeth to catch light. “Are you absolutely sure? Because I’m going to be incredibly disappointed if this is where I find out you _do_ tend to break your word.”

 _Back to normal we go,_ Byleth thinks a little acidly, and does not tell him no.

“Okay,” Claude says, any tiredness and melancholy steaming right off him like any of Lorenz’s insults. Whatever has lit up his mind has now taken him whole. “Gotcha, Teach, that’s all I need. I can work with that. I’ll take it seriously this time, I promise. You know that, right?”

Byleth smiles at him and looks up, closing her eyes against the sun. She can feel rather than see the way he reaches up, muscles tensing, arms extending until his fingertips strain against the confines of his flesh. Reaching out, up, forward, sunward -- tossing the bark as far as his strength will carry it, and they do not hear the splash.

 _He will never stop reaching up,_ says a memory in her head. _He’s too young now, but one day -- one day he will reach out and his hand will graze the sky._

His voice reaches her through the fog of the fading memory, laughing, brilliant. “Right, Teach? You _do_ know that?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Claude,” she says without opening her eyes.

She feels his breath on her ear as he says, wicked, “I don’t believe you.”

A corner of her lip rises. She lowers her hips along the log until her feet dip into the surface of the silver-bright water, and then swings her leg and splashes him. 

Claude makes a high shocked noise - and then dissolves into laugher so loud and free that the birds on the cliffside trees startle to flight. Without a second’s hesitation, he jumps off the log and into the river. Her hands hook around her calves, pulling her in. The log is slippery, and they both tumble into the shockingly cold stream, her own thin, reedy laughter mingling with his. 

She wrestles him onto his knees, and he goes down easily, sides too shaky with mirth to struggle. His uniform soaks immediately, splatters on his yellow capelet darkening it to rich gold. The he twists his fist into her sleeve, swiping a leg through her ankles -- the river is quick, its stone slippery -- and she falls, sun-kissed arms pressing her back against the shallow riverbed. The water pours into her ears, filling them with ageless murmuring. Claude leans over her on his knees, his hair streaked with the sun, eyes brighter still - his lips move into a familiar shape --

_You do know that, Teach, don’t you?_

One day. One day.

“Yes,” she breathes through her laughter. “Yes. I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! Also, I've got a Claudeleth writer server on Discord that looooves new peeps. Let me know if you're interested.
> 
> Now let me just cackle at that last line for a little bit~
> 
> \----  
> Edit: [This now has a direct sequel!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180689)
> 
> [Yell at me on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/wearwind_ao3)


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